Behind screens: challenges and opportunities of participatory online peace education in Finland

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article discusses the challenges and opportunities of participatory online teaching and learning in higher education. It analyses an online peace education course taught during the Covid-19 pandemic in three Finnish universities between 2020–2021. The course explored fundamental mediation skills and practices of positive peace through participatory methods and applied drama. We show how the online setting affected students and teachers, by focusing on the challenges and opportunities for participatory pedagogy in an online environment. The course feedback from students (N = 23) was studied by content analysis and conjoined with the ethnographic observations of the authors. Our findings suggest that mediation skills and practices of positive peace can be effectively taught and analysed online. However, maintaining active presence and emotional sharing present both challenges and opportunities for participatory online education. The findings will be of interest to researchers in cognate fields of scholarship, as well as activists and teachers engaged in participatory teaching and how it can be effectively deployed online.